Case Western Reserve University, though small and in general unknown outside those who have reasons to look at college rankings, stands as a powerful school that finds itself on fertile ground for students with imagination, innovation, and motivation.

As stated by others, Cleveland and Case have room for improvement, as do all colleges. However, I dare say that Case prepares its students appropriately by forcing them into a sink-or-swim environment that replicates post-campus life. Case mimics reality, a world where opportunity isn't handed on a platter and where social outreach, intelligent growth, and personal motivation are an individual's responsibilities, not a governmental obligation. What looks like oppression to some students is to others an opportunity to be challenged and to mature. It is what college exists for.

If people wish to party and lead wild lifestyles, going to college is neither the most time efficient nor the most cost effective path to take. The 50k we spend per year will go far for traveling and living an eventful and exciting life. Perhaps some students who feel frustrated with Case might benefit from spending a year's tuition cost/time traveling and enjoying the world. Perhaps after such adventures students could then sit down at the table, pick back up the Case hand they folded a year ago, and realize that for education, Case truly excels at what it sets out to do.

I admit that TV Guide, pre-planned entertainment is not Case's forte - though I do know most Case students still somehow form lasting social networks and many wonderful friends. Case borders along a blatantly obvious poverty zone - but amidst the same streets shine not only countless cultural experiences but also many areas of need for those students who feel positive actions speak louder than empty complaints. Case requires its students to make sacrifices to reach the goals they seek to attain - but those who give what it takes succeed in their careers and accomplish their ambitions.

Napoleon was no great sight in foreign lands to the native peoples who expected a tall and daunting military commander - but those who were aware of who Napoleon was recognized him as a strong, pragmatic commander, the leader of France. In the same manner Case will be a disappointment to students who apply without thinking about what enrollment here will put before them. For students who are aware of what Case has to offer, there is no better educational opportunity in the country.

Synonyms: Case, Hell, Nerd's Xanadu, pit of despair from which you shall never escape

Case Western Reserve University, formerly known to students as CWRU (pronounced "crew") and now called by the administration-enforced moniker "Case", is a small engineering and science oriented college in the ghettos of Cleveland, Ohio. This insidious institution lures prospective students with promises of graduation within four years and well-paying jobs soon after.

Once these new students arrive, they quickly realize the truth. Segregated in the “North Residential Village”, a desolate collection of rundown dorms far from the center of campus, freshmen are confronted with the complete lack of campus activities and the sheer tedium of day to day existence. Surrounded by introverted computer geeks who seem on the verge of spontaneous combustion every time the sun appears and uniformly unattractive members of the opposite sex, students quickly turn to Case’s high speed computer network for solace. Here some freshmen have been known to download multiple gigabytes of pornography while simultaneously maxing out their bandwidth allotments.

Once the academic year begins in earnest, things only continue in their downward spiral. Apathetic professors and incompetent TAs pile mind numbing amounts of work on their students, quickly reducing them to burnt-out husks of their former selves. In response, some overachieving students have resorted to unabashed ass kissing to maintain their grades, while the most intelligent students leave Case at their earliest opportunity. Those who remain become malleable zombies ideal for low wage labor in Case’s many “student employment” positions. Tests are difficult at Case, and after finals the near-suicidal students stumble home looking for work to replenish their tuition-depleted bank accounts.

Unfortunately for upperclassmen, matters do not improve in subsequent years. Classes get harder, life gets duller, and hair gets thinner. Ulcers eat away at students as caffeine intake is increased to cope with the larger workload.

Let this be a warning to any prospective students who are considering Case Western Reserve University. Turn back now and choose a better school, before it is too late…

Overheard on the Case Quad:

You think you've had it rough? You have no idea what I did with Prof. XXXXXXX for my math grade!

The Urban Dictionary T-Shirt

Case Western Reserve University is a school where you can have a great 4 years if you want to, or a painful four years if you only dwell on how it doesn't compare to your stereotypical college.

I had a great time at case, graduated in four years, and ended up with a high paying job (even though the career center is somewhat lacking). I also made the most of my time in college, I played sports, joined a fraternity, got involved with a couple clubs, and got to know as many people as I could. Sure there was a lot of work, and that definately got my down at times, but if you don't want an academically challenging school, then you shouldn't go to case.

So, to all the freshmen who have posted "definitions" of Case on here, the school is only what you make of it, so make the best of it!

The Urban Dictionary T-Shirt

Case is not as bad as everyone says it is. Most of the people who have a problem with it are just those who are bitter about the fact that they couldn't get into one of their ivy league schools, and had to settle for Case. Most of the time, I tell people to stop complaining about Case, and if they really had the balls, they'd transfer to a university that has what they really want.

Most of those who complain say that Case doesn't have enough of a party atmosphere. That's total bull. Case has a decent party scene, and if you're picking a school based on whether or not the party scene is high enough, then you have bigger problems.

Now, I do understand that people pick schools for different reasons. But if you picked a school to go to because you want a calibar education, and you want to be pushed to your limit, then Case is the place. Most people who are here know what they want, and they want to learn and succeed, not take the time to party.

The point is: if you want to study, and do nothing else, then come to Case. If you want a party, go to Kent. Another point: Case is not that bad as everyone says. The curriculum here is not anything short of what you'd expect to have at any Ivy-League. And, no, I'm not in the political sciences, or some area that requires me not to take the sciences. I'm a Biology/Pre-Med major, and the sciences and math here aren't as hard as what everyone says.

Case Western Reserve University is not as bad as you think; it's all talk.

The Urban Dictionary T-Shirt

Anyone who has ever read (and presumably understood) Sartre's "No Exit" will have no problem understanding how this "powerful school that finds itself on fertile ground for students with imagination, innovation, and motivation" functions in the real world. Notice, first, that everyone who offers a good definition of Case here offers only idyllic platitudes.

Case is the ultimate institution of absurdity.

1.Academics -- Case's academics are actually pretty good. When you compare it with other institutions, however, the workload is mind-numbing. The problem isn't necessarily that you have to work hard. However, this conversation illustrates the problem:

A: the first year is the worst by far.
B: how come?
A: because after the first year you are mentally acclimated to the fact that your professors will give you more work than you can physically do. By the second year you realize that you can't do everything, so you feel more comfortable in your inability.

The academics are not ivy-league. But the workload is more than comparable. The ratio should be even, but it's lopsided.

2.Social life -- parties at Case have a customary policy of "girls only" because if boys can get in, the ratio will always be lopsided. The amount of girls that party is already low, but the amount of guys who want to meet girls and get laid without remembering the morning after is astronomically high.

Michael Chrichton, in Airframe, wrote that little boys reach a crossroads around the age of 13. Most boys stop playing with their toys, start socializing with girls, and date. The engineers didn't get the memo, and keep playing with their toys. Case is an engineering school, and the boys love their toys. Many Friday and Saturday nights involve (at least in this dorm) six guys piling into one room to play XBOX or WoW while a couple girls lay on the floor, tacitly watching in complete boredom as they listen to "WHAT I TOTALLY JUMPED YOU WERE SO DEAD OH MY GOD YOU'RE SO CHEAP."

3.Size -- it takes almost 30 minutes to walk from one side of campus to the other. There are only 4,000 undergrads (compared with 20-30,000 at University of ______) and the number of buildings makes absolutely no sense.

4.Administration -- the administration at Case is concerned with finding the best non-solution to problems. As you can read in other definitions, they spend a bunch of money (raising that tuition!) on something completely erroneous that has nothing to do with the problem.

If you have a good sense of humor, you can come to Case, observe that literally nothing works in the way it should, that there is an absurd "solution" to every problem, that you have "one of those days" every single day...and laugh about it. You accept it soon enough, and it's funny to laugh at the purely miserable state of everything, and how people try to pretend that it's still a world-class institution. A surface-level look at things shows that it's a cool school, but closer examination will only reveal the dysfunctionality of every facet of the campus.

But it's a namebrand education, and it has a reputation which precedes it by leagues. The bottom line is this: if you want an education that only involves you training for a specific job, come to Case. If you want an education that has a less myopic focus, Case probably isn't the place for you.

Isn't it ironic that our Case Western Reserve University English class is reading "No Exit" this week?

Case Western Reserve University is the most frustrating learning environment in the world. From students to the administration to the city of Cleveland, everything is a mess.

First, lets start with the students. Socially, Case students model themselves after the South African apartheid system. The nerds band together from day one and form their own environment of anime, DDR, study parties, computer programming, and lord knows what else. Then, there are the normal people. Once in a while, a few of them will become friends and have fun at Case by not paying attention to what is going on around them. Everyone is always ugly and pissed off about classes or the weather. Nothing done by the administration ever solves any problems because both groups want everything different. For example, normal people may want a new gym while the nerds want a new computer lounge equipped with megaplex59625 video cards and 92 ultrabytes of RAM, so the administration responds by erecting a giant obelisk in the center of campus.

You might laugh at that, but that is seriously what the administration does. When confronted with a problem, they come up with eleborate and costly solutions that don't work anyway. For example, students didn't like the cafeteria food, so the administration spent $500,000 on a new diner. However, it used the same food made in the cafeteria, only you got to pay for it this time. I once complained about the milk dispensers not working right. The week after, they painted them black and white like cows. We are living in dorms older than Jesus, so they are building new ones. But, they are going to charge us over $2000 more per year than what we pay now which is already insane. The campus bus service has problems running on time, so they are in the process of inventing an elaborate GPS tracking system so students know where the buses are. I truly will enjoy watching the new GPS system when it shows the drivers abandoning their routes for cigarette breaks, which is the whole problem in the first place.

Oh yeah, the professors all make sure to out-do the administration. A lot of them operate on the basis of "it was tough for me so I'm going to make it tougher for you". They want Case to be the same as Stanford and M.I.T. academically, so they all teach their graduate material to undergraduates and make life hell.

Cleveland is also the worst place on earth. The weather sucks. People from the ghetto mug students all the time. The city doesn't have a budget to fix roads, so the main bridge on campus fell down. Traffic is now a nightmare, and there is a hospital right in the middle of things. I saw an ambulance stuck in a long line of traffic the other day - I wish I had a picture of it.

To sum things up, DO NOT COME HERE.

Other amusing things that happen here:
-condoms are the last things that the vending machines run out of
-we currently have our home football and baseball games at a local high school since we have no fields
-most of the porn downloaded occurs on Friday and Saturday nights
-it takes a half hour to walk across campus at a fast pace
-I saw a Case commercial on MTV while watching Viva la Bam...can we say "media whore"?
-I'm so pissed I don't even want to go on...

This is part of a real email from professor to his class:

"Dear class,
Hmm. Let me re-word that ...

Class:
The mid-term exam was an unmitigated disaster. It appears that not one
student got a single problem correct. In spite of my severe disappointment,
I'll have to assume this was my fault. (Of course, this won't keep me from
flogging you when you return!)."